Many plants are sensitive to a number of environmental factors, including atmospheric and soil temperature, which is particularly acute at the early stages of plant development. As such, planting seeds too early can often lead to loss of young plants, requiring reseeding and thereby increasing expense and time expended for planting, reducing yield, and potentially delaying delivery of crops to market. It therefore is important that a farmer be reasonably certain that the seed is planted at a time when the risk of early plant damage can be avoided. This is especially important for cold-sensitive plants, such as cotton.
For many plants, the criteria for when a seed should be planted to avoid loss due to environmental conditions are well known. For example, the growth cycle of cotton has been well studied and the effect of various environmental factors on the stages of development is well understood. See, for example, Robertson et al., Cotton Physiology Today, Vol 13, No. 1, pages 1-5 (April 2007); and Robertson et al., Cotton Physiology Today, Vol 13, No. 2, pages 1-5 (May 2007). For example, cotton seeds require five consecutive days after planting with low temperatures above 50° F., mid-morning soil temperature at 68° F. or higher, and an accumulated DD60 value of 25 or greater for acceptable results.
However, the calculations often involve cumbersome mathematical formulas that are not easily understood by the layperson. Moreover, current systems for determining optimal planting times often omit critical factors or do not use up to date and accurate information.
A DD60 accumulation calculation program is available from the University of Arkansas. However, the program relies on 30 year norm temperatures to calculate future DD60 accumulations, which is of little relevance to predicting actual DD60 accumulations in the future. Moreover, the program does not have any way to integrate other relevant data in the report, such as soil temperature, ground saturation, and predicted precipitation. The program also requires the user to pick a planting date from which to calculate the DD60 accumulations, thereby necessitating either that several reports be generated or that individual five day DD60s be extrapolated by hand from a single report. For at least these reasons, the University of Arkansas program is of limited utility in predicting a best day on which to plant a seed.
The University of California further provides an online “Cotton Planting Forecast”, which provides DD60 data for a limited number of locations over only the next 5 day period. However, the “Cotton Planting Forecast” does not have any options to customize the forecast for a specific location and does not incorporate either soil data or the minimum air temperature over the next five days into the calculation. For at least these reasons, the University of California program is of limited utility in predicting a best day on which to plant a seed.
It therefore would be valuable to have an automated device and method of determining the optimal timeframe in which a given seed variety may be planted that minimizes the measurements and calculations required by the farmer.